Adrenal Cortex & Cancer

Two San Francisco surgeons, Walter Bernard Coffey, 62, and John Davis Humber, 35, of the Southern Pacific (Railroad's) General Hospital, able men both, deliberately told the newspapers that they were using extracts of the adrenal cortex on human cases of cancer, with promising results. Editors naturally "played up" their story, and readers, as naturally, inferred that here was a definite cure for cancer. They rushed in multitudes to San Francisco. Last week Drs. Coffey and Humber could not attend the hordes of miserable comers who applied for treatment at the General Hospital. Many they found it necessary to treat at their hospital's curb.

This situation embarrassed the surgeons. They hastened to write a joint letter to the American Medical Association: ". . . we wish to impress on the medical profession the fact that the work to date, although quite promising, is still in the experimental stage, and therefore decidedly inconclusive. . . ."

Pleasant to them was the praise of their employer, President Paul Shoup of the Southern Pacific Co.: "We want Dr. Coffey to do his research where he began it'' (in the Southern Pacific General Hospital).

Adrenal Glands are two small yellowish bodies, shaped like cocked hats, which fit tightly on top of each kidney. Each gland has three general parts--a coating of fibrous material, a centre (the medulla) and between the two a cortex (inner bark, as it were). The adrenals have the richest blood supply of any of the body parts. In proportion to their weight more blood pours through them in a given time than through any other organ. Their wholesome activity governs a person's entire health.

The medullary portion secretes a hormone which Professor John Jacob Abel of Johns Hopkins University has isolated. The synthetic adrenal medullary hormone is manufactured commercially as epinephrine. It is a dangerously potent drug which sometimes can revive a stopped heart.

The adrenal cortex puzzles physiologists. It is an essential to life. Its destruction causes death in from 24 to 48 hours. Apparently it secretes a special hormone which has not yet been identified. If its hormone does not exist, some substance like a hormone profoundly affects the whole body. It has sharp effect on the sympathetic nervous system and a profound effect on the genital apparatus. Overgrowth of the cortex is associated with precocious sexual development. Such overgrowth accounts for those rare cases where an exuberant girl changes into a shy boy with boyish hair on face, limbs and body, slim buttocks and thighs and certain internal atrophies and growths (TIME, Dec. 23).

Drs. Coffey and Humber believe that the essential substance of the adrenal cortex stabilizes growth of body tissues. Paucity of this substance permits, they think, dormant wild cells to grow into cancers. Their converse is to supply the patient the substance which apparently at once thwarts such rampant growth.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.